The Gawri Language of Kalam and Dir Kohistan
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THE GAWRI LANGUAGE OF KALAM AND DIR KOHISTAN by Joan L.G. Baart and Muhammad Zaman Sagar 1. The language, its speakers, and its environment 1.1 Linguistic environment Kalam and Dir Kohistani (also called Gawri JDZU_) is one of about two dozen languages that are spoken in the mountain areas of northern Pakistan. The name Kohistan in Urdu and Persian means ‘land of mountains’, and Kohistani, when used as the name of a language, can be translated as ‘mountain language’. The subject of the current essay is the Kohistani language that is spoken in the Kalam tahsil in district Swat, and also in the Kohistan tahsil in district Dir, in the North-West Frontier Province. As one leaves Pashto-speaking Mingora, the major market town in district Swat, and travels up the Swat valley, Pashto remains the predominant language up to and including the village of Madyan. After Madyan one enters another language area, namely that of Torwali. Bahrain village is the centre of the Torwali-speaking area. Travelling further up one eventually leaves the Torwali area, and passes a number of settlements (Asret, Laikot, Peshmal), where Gujari is the predominant language. Finally, one reaches the point where the Karan Duki TDUDQ GXNL, a small tributary of the Swat river, comes gushing down the mountain, driving the turbines of the Kalam power house.Here, one passes from Bahrain tahsil into Kalam tahsil, and at the same time into the Gawri language area. Even before this point, across the river from Peshmal in the village of Ariani, one can find homes where a form of Gawri called Dachwa GD&ZD is spoken. While Gawri is the predominant language in Kalam tahsil, it is certainly not the only language. Over the centuries, groups of people from different ethnic backgrounds have found their way to the Kalam area and settled there. Among them, Pashto, Gujari, and Khowar- speaking communities are the most numerous. Many of these people have learned Gawri as a second language. In addition, Pashto is spoken as a second language by virtually all the men and a lesser number of women of Kalam tahsil, as this is the lingua franca of district Swat, and the North-West Frontier Province in general. Traditionally, the Gawri-speaking area in Swat is divided into three major clusters of villages and hamlets, each named after its principal village: the lower cluster is Kalam NDODP proper; up from Kalam there is the Utrot XWUR7 cluster in the West, and the Ushu X6X cluster in the North-East. The three communities have different traditions regarding their historical descent, and each has its own political organisation. Although the dialect of Utrot and the dialect of Ushu are perceptibly different from each other and from the dialect of the Kalam cluster, all three are very much the same language, in the opinion of the people as well as according to more formal sociolinguistic criteria (see Rensch 1992). 1 As mentioned above, the language is spread over a larger area than just Kalam tahsil. When one crosses over the mountains westward from Utrot, one reaches the upper part of the Panjkora valley, which belongs to district Dir. This area is often called Dir Kohistan. Here too, in a number of villages (Thal, Lamuti, Barikot, Biar, Kalkot and Rajkot/Patrak), the same Kohistani language is spoken. 1.2 Geographical area Kalam Kohistan is the name given to the northern-most parts of the Swat district in the North- West Frontier Province, including Kalam and the areas beyond Kalam. To the North it is bordered by the mountains of Chitral and the Gilgit Agency. To the East, several high mountain passes lead into the Kandia valley of Indus Kohistan. Frequently-travelled mountain passes also connect to the West, to the villages of Thal and Lamuti in Dir Kohistan. Kalam is the name of a village located at the confluence of the Ushu and Utrot rivers, which form the river Swat. The Kalam Kohistani people occupy most of the upper-most parts of the Swat valley. However, some of the highest permanent settlements are not inhabited by Kalamis but by Gujars, who speak their own language, Gujari. Kalam village is located at an altitude of approximately 7,000 feet above sea level. The scenery in Kalam is dominated by the glaciers of the nearby Mankial range, east of Kalam, and by the more distant peak of the Falakser. The peaks of Mankial and Falakser reach an altitude of just under 20,000 feet. Dir District, of which Dir Kohistan forms a part, also comprises a section of Pakistan©sN orth- West Frontier Province. Chitral borders it in the North, Swat in the East, Afghanistan and Bajaur in the West, and Malakand in the South. The Kohistani people of Dir live in the north- ern part of Dir District, in the upper reaches of the Panjkora valley. A jeep road leading from Lamuti over a mountain pass to Utrot in Kalam Kohistan is presently under construction. 1.3 Population Stahl (1988:40) and Rensch (1992:33) estimate the number of Gawri speakers in Swat to be 40,000. A regional development project (KIDP) gave an estimated (supposedly more reliable than the 1981 census figures) total population of Kalam tahsil in 1982 of around 40,000. However, from this figure we have to subtract the population of the non-Gawri speaking communities in Kalam tahsil. On the basis of the KIDP data, we arrive at a number of between 26,000 and 30,000 mother- tongue speakers of Gawri in Kalam tahsil in 1982. Assuming an average annual population growth rate of three percent (which roughly approximates the figure for Pakistan as a whole), the number of Gawri mother-tongue speakers in Kalam tahsil in 1995 may have been in the range of 38,000 to 44,000. To this we need to add the Gawri-speaking population of Dir Kohistan and the Dachwa speakers in Ariani (which belongs to Bahrain tahsil). According to Keiser (1986:493) the population of village Thal in Dir Kohistan was approximately 6,000 in 1984. In July 1995, two men from Kalam visited Dir Kohistan and on our request inquired about numbers of Gawri speakers. Based on the number of forest royalty shares, the number of Gawri speakers was said to be 8,000 for those living in Thal, 7,000 for Lamuti, and 2,000 for Kalkot. We do not have up-to-date figures for the other Gawri-speaking villages in Dir Kohistan (Barikot, Biar, Patrak). On the basis of the available information, the 2 total number of mother-tongue speakers of Gawri, including both Swat and Dir Kohistan, may be estimated to be in the range of 60,000 to 70,000 in 1995. 1.4 Language names In the linguistic and ethnographic literature, the language has been given different names. Morgenstierne (1940) uses the name Bashkarik (ED`NDU_N), a name that was also used by Biddulph (1880/1971:70,71). Grierson in the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI 8/2:507ff) called the language Garwi (JDUZ_) . Barth (1956:52) and Barth & Morgenstierne (1958:120) gave Gawri (JDZU_) as a more accurate version of the latter and also found that the name Bashkarik is not known by the Gawri speakers in the Kalam area. Rensch (1992:5) and his co-workers found that the name Gawri was regarded as pejorative by some speakers of the language. Rensch and his co-workers use Kalami and Kalami Kohistani in their work. The name Bashkari is used by Khowar speakers in Swat Kohistan for speakers of Gawri, while the Gawri language is called Bashkarwar in Khowar. Apparently both these names, Gawri and Bashkari, have a long history. The name Gauri occurs in the Vedas, and in the work of Panini (late 5th or early 4th century BC) and other Indian sources, as a name of the river Panjkora in what is now district Dir. In 327 BC Alexander the Great fought a battle in this area at a place called Massaka, with a tribe called the Gauraioi (also called Gretai). In the work of Ptolemy (c. 150 AD), the region directly to the west of the river Swat is called Goryaia (see Schwartzberg 1992 for more information on these references). About the tribal name Bashkar, Bloch (1965:23) says that it is a relic of the Vedas and “no doubt the same as that of the school, which preserved the Rgveda.” The Gawri-speaking people themselves most commonly use the name Kohistani to refer to their language. Originally the name Kohistani was used by the Pathans that lived in the lower parts of the Swat valley for the tribes that lived higher up (Biddulph 1880/1971:69; Barth 1956:52). 1.5 History The predecessors of the Gawri-speaking people are perhaps the same as the Gauraioi (Gawri), who inhabited the lower, more fertile parts of Dir from as early as the days of Panini and Alexander the Great, as mentioned above. In the 11th century AD, the area was conquered by Afghan troops under Mahmood of Ghazni and the original population was forced to flee to the remote, mountainous parts of the Panjkora valley. Local traditions confirm that from there, groups of Gawri settlers passed over across the mountain passes into the Utrot, Kalam, and Ushu valleys in what is now district Swat, while others stayed in the upper Panjkora valley. From the 14th century onward, a new wave of Afghan invaders (the Yusufzai Pathans) gradually took over the lower parts of Dir and Swat. Under pressure from the Yusufzais, the Pathans that had settled there before fled the area, and some of them arrived in the upper reaches of the Swat and Panjkora valleys.